The growing understanding of the mechanisms of drugs and reagents involved with use, efficacy, and toxicity illustrates the importance of precision delivery both in location and timing. To achieve improved use, efficacy, and safety, certain drugs and reagents, such as drug combinations, may require complex administration schemes or release profiles to control release of one or more drug or reagent components to achieve a desired absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination profile. However, the demands required to achieve consistent precision delivery often run counter to ensuring proper use and patient compliance via simplicity of administration, e.g., a once-daily pill.
Three-dimensional (3D) printing enables precise placement of materials on a substrate to form three-dimensional structures from computer-generated designs. For example, in an application of 3D printing for producing drug dosage forms, a negative mold was 3D printed and subsequently used to form a shape of an erodible material admixed with a drug by pouring the erodible material admixed with the drug into the negative mold (WO2017010938). The molded erodible material admixed with a drug was then manually assembled into the final drug dosage form. However, such techniques are limited, e.g., limited throughput, need for extra manufacturing steps required when using a mold process, and limited drug dosage form design capability/flexibility due to the molding process.
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